VIVA: Please stop killing us with info-crapo-sexo-tainment
Monday, February 19th, 2007
I'm a loyal rider and supporter of York Region's VIVA Transit system . I spend at least 2 hours a day on these fast, (mostly) efficient buses. Most of the fleet now includes an LCD TV display at the front of each bus. It used to be easy to ignore these things (they were turned off much of the time), but over the past few weeks, the incessant, mindless, insulting crap that flickers over VIVA TV is really starting to bug me. This stream of shite appears to be downloaded over a wireless internet connection and played back in a continuous loop using Windows-based display software. As shown in Exhibit A and B, you get the time, weather, scrolling headlines of "celebrity" gossip and any other headline that includes the word "sex", "scandal" or "explosion" in it. Apparently we are all dying to know about the lunatic antics of Brangelina, Tomkat, Spears and Hilton, et al.
VIVA and bytemedia (what dat?) have made a terrible marketing blunder here. Most of the time, most riders simply ignore these obnoxious flickerings. And for those few who mistakenly look up, much of the time, that screen will have already crashed with a Blue Screen of Death, or entered a perpetual reboot & crash cycle. So, it would be best for riders and the VIVA marketing geniuses to just get rid of these things now – it would free up some bandwidth so passengers could check their email, browse the web — or blog their brains out. If you VIVA suits still believe that riders can't survive without the boob tube, at least give us BBC World, or CBC's Newsworld, or CNN. I just don't want to hear about Paris Hilton's latest involuntary gyrations or Tomkat's wonky dance moves.
It's time to torpedo this horrible experiment.
